{"id":260854,"date":"2025-07-13T06:08:19","date_gmt":"2025-07-13T06:08:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/260854\/"},"modified":"2025-07-13T06:08:19","modified_gmt":"2025-07-13T06:08:19","slug":"for-years-the-eus-border-agency-illegally-transferred-data-on-migrants-and-activists-to-europol-international","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/260854\/","title":{"rendered":"For years, the EU\u2019s border agency illegally transferred data on migrants and activists to Europol | International"},"content":{"rendered":"

For years, under the banner of combating human trafficking, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, commonly known as Frontex, collected personal data from migrants upon their arrival to Europe. This was done via covert interrogations that lacked basic legal safeguards. <\/p>\n

Between 2016 and 2023, the agency illegally transferred the data of more than 13,000 people to the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation (Europol). There, the data was stored in criminal intelligence files for use in EU police investigations. An investigation by Le Monde, Solomon \u2013 a non-profit based in Greece \u2013 and EL PA\u00cdS based on hundreds of pages of internal documents and interviews with data protection experts and lawyers reveals the involvement of Frontex and Europol in opaque and legally questionable practices. These have led to the criminalization of migrants and the EU-based activists who assist them or have been in contact with them. <\/p>\n

The border agency was forced to change its data transfer protocols following a report by an independent EU body that deemed these practices to be unlawful.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy whole life was in that police file: my relatives, my calls to my mother, even false details about my sex life. They wanted to portray me as a promiscuous lesbian, using morality to make me look suspicious,\u201d says Helena Maleno, 54, a Spanish human rights activist. She was targeted by law enforcement<\/a> because of her work informing authorities about people in danger trying to reach Europe by sea. Criminal investigations launched more than a decade ago by authorities in Spain and Morocco reveal the extent of the police siege around her.<\/p>\n

\"HelenaHelena Maleno, human rights activist.Javier S\u00e1nchez Salcedo<\/p>\n

The file on Maleno compiled by the Spanish National Police included, among other things, three Frontex documents containing details of interviews conducted by European agents with migrants who arrived by boat in Spain between 2015 and 2016. The reports, accessed by this investigation, included information (such as her Facebook account) that presented Maleno as a suspect in human trafficking. The Spanish National Police obtained these reports from Europol\u2019s criminal database in late 2016.<\/p>\n

For years, human rights workers have warned of attempts, often made on flimsy legal grounds, to criminalize irregular migrants, along with EU citizens who provide them with assistance at European borders. Hundreds of migrants or human rights activists are detained each year, accused of facilitating irregular immigration.<\/p>\n

Helena Maleno certainly isn\u2019t the only person to have faced this problem. Norwegian citizen Tommy Olsen and Austrian citizen Natalie Gruber, both well-known activists, discovered that information about their activities also showed up in Europol\u2019s criminal intelligence database.<\/p>\n

On the hunt for information<\/p>\n

The first suspicions about Frontex and Europol exchanging data began back in June of 2022, when the EU\u2019s European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS), an independent authority, issued negative opinions about Frontex\u2019s data-processing rules. The EDPS subsequently launched an investigation. It did so after analyzing the so-called \u201cdebriefing interviews\u201d that Frontex officers, in partnership with national law enforcement, conduct with migrants upon their arrival on European shores. These conversations are in theory voluntary. <\/p>\n

During these interviews, migrants are asked questions about the reasons for their journey, or about the possible modi operandi of human trafficking networks. The EDPS report questioned the voluntary nature of these interviews, citing that \u201cthe vulnerability of interviewees and the circumstances and manner in which interviews take place means that the voluntary nature of these interviews cannot be properly ensured.\u201d Fran Morenilla \u2013 a lawyer specializing in migrant assistance, agrees: \u201cThere\u2019s no record of it, because there\u2019s no signed consent form.\u201d<\/p>\n

The EDPS also inquired about the use of the information collected. Unlike Europol, Frontex does not have a legal mandate to investigate crimes or to systematically collect personal data to identify criminal suspects. The EDPS criticized Frontex for routinely labeling anyone mentioned during a debriefing interview as a \u201csuspect\u201d and subsequently \u201ctransferring\u201d this information to Europol, including \u201cdata on persons the interviewee has heard of or seen.\u201d There was no verification about the credibility of the names given, or whether the names were mentioned out of fear, or in an attempt to obtain some benefit.<\/p>\n

Under Frontex\u2019s current mandate, in force since 2019, the agency is only authorized to share this data with Europol after a strict \u201ccase-by-case\u201d assessment.<\/p>\n

\"Frontex\"An excerpt from an email sent from the Frontex Data Protection Office (DPO) to Hans Leijtens, the director general of Frontex. It notes that the EDPS has concluded that Frontex \u201ctransmitted unlawfully operational personal data for 4 years to Europol\u201d and \u201cissues a reprimand to Frontex.\u201d<\/p>\n

Following the EDPS\u2019s investigations, an email sent last December by Nayra P\u00e9rez \u2013 then head of the Frontex Data Protection Office (DPO) to Executive Director Hans Leijtens and his deputy, Uku S\u00e4rekanno \u2013 summarized a clear verdict: \u201cThe EDPS concludes that the Agency transmitted unlawfully operational personal data for 4 years to Europol,\u201d P\u00e9rez wrote. Indeed, the final investigative report, which focused on the transmission of data between 2019 and mid-2023, confirmed that Frontex \u201cautomatically\u201d sent each and every report to its colleagues based in The Hague. Already in 2015, in a previous report, the agency warned that Frontex\u2019s automatic transfers \u201ccould constitute a potential breach of the [Frontex] Regulation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Frontex suspended this practice just four days after the EDPS\u2019s preliminary report in May of 2023, which included a warning. Since then, it has revised its protocols: now, personal data is only shared with Europol in response to \u201cspecific and justified\u201d requests. Of the 18 submitted by May of 2025, Frontex approved only four. \u201cThe agency has drawn clear lessons from this experience,\u201d Frontex spokesperson Chris Borowski told this inquiry.<\/p>\n

Europol declined to clarify whether it would delete data that was sent irregularly, as required by EU law. Its spokesperson, Jan Op Gen Oorth, maintains that the fact that the EDPS reprimanded Frontex \u201cdoesn\u2019t mean that Europol\u2019s data-processing wasn\u2019t compliant [with the law].\u201d Niovi Vavoula, a data protection expert at the University of Luxembourg, emphasizes, however, that the ban on automated transfers is a first step, but \u201cEuropol\u2019s responsibility to delete the data it received illegally cannot be forgotten.\u201d<\/p>\n

A copy of the EDPS\u2019s final report (dated December of 2024) obtained by this investigation reveals the scale of the data transfers. Between 2020 and 2022, according to Frontex reports, Europol processed the personal data of 937 individuals who were considered to be suspects in human trafficking. Meanwhile, 875 \u201cintelligence reports\u201d were issued, intended for the respective national law enforcement authorities investigating this crime. But this is only a small fraction of the reports on more than 13,000 individuals \u2014 including their names, phone numbers and Facebook accounts, among other information that was collected \u2014 that the border agency sent to Europol\u2019s European Migrant Smuggling Centre (EMSC) between 2016 and 2023. Maleno was among them. And Olsen and Gruber were suspects too.<\/p>\n

Turning people into \u201csuspects\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n

Frontex claims that it doesn\u2019t collect personal data from interviewees. The agency presents the debriefings of those who share information as being entirely voluntary, but reports from the EDPS and legal experts say otherwise.<\/p>\n

Legal experts argue that interviewees lack legal safeguards, such as the presence of a lawyer. The authorities, however, insist that attorneys aren\u2019t necessary, since the migrants aren\u2019t being detained. Daniel Arencibia, a lawyer working on cases involving migrants accused of human trafficking in Spain\u2019s Canary Islands<\/a>, says that what Frontex does during these interviews \u201ctakes place in a black box, in the absence of regular criminal proceedings or legal safeguards that could limit the exposure of vulnerable migrants to criminalization.\u201d<\/p>\nDATEEVENT<\/tr>\n\nJanuary 2016<\/td>\nAutomatic data transfers between Frontex and Europol begin<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\nNovember 2016<\/td>\nEuropol sends Frontex\u2019s reports on Helena Maleno to the Spanish police<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\nOctober 2022<\/td>\nThe EDPS conducts an audit of data transfers at Frontex headquarters<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\nNovember 2022<\/td>\nHearing on Frontex-Europol transfers in the European Parliament<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\nMay 24, 2023<\/td>\nThe EDPS communicates the results of the investigation to Frontex<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\nMay 29, 2023<\/td>\nFrontex suspends automatic data transfers to Europol<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\nNovember 2023<\/td>\nFrontex resumes case-by-case data transfers to Europol<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\nJanuary 8, 2025<\/td>\nThe EDPS publicly reprimands Frontex for illegal data transfers<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\nJanuary 21, 2025<\/td>\nFrontex notifies Europol of illegal data transfers<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

Gabriella S\u00e1nchez, a Georgetown University scholar and former criminal investigator specializing in people trafficking, argues that the notion of smuggling used by Frontex and Europol \u201cassumes that all facilitators are organized into networks and is based on racist [perceptions] about smugglers. But, in fact, migrants are systematically accused of facilitating their own smuggling, which accelerates their criminalization. In other words, thousands of people in the EU are caught in the web of data collection.\u201d<\/p>\n

One person who was unaware that both Frontex and Europol possess information about him is Tommy Olsen, a 52-year-old Norwegian kindergarten teacher. He has spent years alerting the authorities when people undertaking the dangerous journey from Turkey to Greece are in danger. He has also documented violent pushbacks by the Hellenic Coast Guard. Since 2019, he has faced multiple criminal investigations in Greece: he\u2019s been accused of involvement in migrant smuggling, a charge that he denies.<\/p>\n

\"Frontex\"Tommy Olsen, from the NGO Aegean Boat Report.<\/p>\n

Freedom of Information (FOI) requests submitted to Europol for this investigation reveal that the agency has at least three \u201cintelligence notifications\u201d that mention the Aegean Boat Report, Olsen\u2019s one-person NGO. Europol has refused to disclose the contents, which it considers \u201chighly sensitive\u201d and \u201crelevant to past and ongoing investigations.\u201d In May 2024, a Greek prosecutor on the island of Kos issued a new arrest warrant for the Norwegian activist. Although seven previous police investigations against him have already been closed, he now faces a 20-year prison sentence. \u201cI had no idea Europol had files on me. Why are they collecting and sharing data about my activities and my organization, which simply seeks to defend refugee rights?\u201d Olsen asks. <\/p>\n

With more than 800 debriefing officers deployed in its 2024 operations, these interviews constitute, according to the EDPS, Frontex\u2019s \u201clargest operational collection of personal data.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s extremely difficult to analyze exactly how Frontex exchanges data with other actors, because we lawyers are kept in the dark,\u201d Arencibia emphasizes. Olsen isn\u2019t the only human rights activist who\u2019s been affected. In May of 2022, 35-year-old Austrian activist Natalie Gruber learned of a Europol file on her after submitting a request for access to personal data. The co-founder of Josoor International Solidarity, a non-profit that documents pushbacks from Bulgaria and Greece to Turkey, Gruber became a suspect after the Greek Prosecutor\u2019s Office filed multiple charges against her. She was accused of facilitating the illegal entry of migrants into Greece. One of the open cases was dismissed last year, but the second one remains open.<\/p>\n

\"NatalieNatalie Gruber, from the NGO Jasoor.<\/p>\n

Citing confidentiality reasons, Europol has refused to release the reports concerning Olsen and Gruber. The agency claims that doing so could \u201cjeopardize [ongoing] criminal investigations.\u201d Gruber has challenged this refusal via the EDPS since 2022, but her complaint still remains unresolved. \u201cYou\u2019re faced with this Goliath of bureaucracy that never tells you anything. All you can do is submit another request and wait. It\u2019s exhausting and it profoundly affects your life,\u201d the Austrian citizen laments.<\/p>\n

It remains unclear exactly how Europol obtained the information about Gruber and Olsen. Nor is it known whether this information contributed to the criminal cases against them. Olsen\u2019s own request for data, submitted to Europol in April 2025, is pending.<\/p>\n

Profound Consequences<\/p>\n

The cases of Maleno, Olsen and Gruber represent just a fraction of the thousands of individuals \u2014 as well as hundreds of organizations, including humanitarian NGOs \u2014 that have landed in Europol databases since Frontex began uploading information to its PeDRA (Processing of Personal Data for Risk Analysis) program in 2016, despite prior warnings from the EDPS.<\/p>\n

The EDPS warns of \u201cprofound consequences\u201d for those involved; they run \u201cthe risk of wrongfully being linked to a criminal activity across the EU, with all of the potential damage for their personal and family life, freedom of movement and occupation that this entails.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Persistent Problem<\/p>\n

In January of this year, Leijtens formally notified Europol that the information transfers made by his agency up until 2023 were unlawful. According to EDPS chief Wojciech Wiewi\u00f3rowski, this notification obliges Europol to \u201cassess which personal data are affected by the transmission and proceed with its deletion or restriction.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although Frontex was eventually forced to change its protocols, in March 2025, the Fundamental Rights Office (FRO), charged with monitoring Frontex\u2019s implementation of its fundamental rights obligations, alerted the agency\u2019s Management Board about cases in which information from debriefings \u201cwas used for the criminal investigation of the interviewed migrants and other persons.\u201d It also expressed concern \u201cabout the access and collection of information recorded on migrants\u2019 phones during interviews.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"ReprimandReprimand in the final report of the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS): \u201cThe EDPS has decided to reprimand Frontex pursuant to Article 58(2)(b) of Regulation (EU) 2018\/1725 considering that a reprimand is an appropriate and necessary corrective measure. A primary purpose of the EDPS\u2019 power to issue a reprimand is to achieve a dissuasive effect and to make it clear to the Union agency concerned that it has infringed the Regulation,\u201d reads the first point.<\/p>\n

Although Frontex still hasn\u2019t fully implemented all of the EDPS\u2019s recommendations, human rights observers from the agency now have access to some of the interviews. And, last year Leijtens adopted new (albeit non-binding) operational procedures aimed at strengthening safeguards. <\/p>\n

But the premise underlying these data collection efforts is flawed, according to academic Gabriella S\u00e1nchez: \u201cEU agencies often justify collecting data on migrants by claiming it\u2019s necessary to combat transnational trafficking networks. This creates the illusion that the data is actually reliable or useful. We know this is not the case.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2017, a year after Spain opened a criminal case against Helena Maleno, the Prosecutor\u2019s Office closed the investigation after finding no wrongdoing. However, the case was still passed \u2014 without due process \u2014 to the Moroccan authorities, who accused her of human trafficking. When she was summoned to testify before a court in Tangier that same year, Maleno was stunned to hear the judge refer directly to the Frontex reports: \u201cI was completely baffled. The judge was specifically asking me about the information contained in the Spanish [National] Police and Frontex documents. It was surreal.\u201d <\/p>\n

In 2019, she was acquitted of all charges. But questions remain. \u201cHow is it possible that Frontex interrogated migrants about me?\u201d Maleno asks. \u201cIs it really their job to spy on human rights activists?\u201d <\/p>\n

An Evasion of Responsibility<\/p>\n

In November of 2022, the European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties held its first hearing on PeDRA, the little-known Frontex surveillance program that transfers personal data to Europol.<\/p>\n

Frontex Deputy Executive Director Uku S\u00e4rekanno explained to MEPs that Frontex had shared data on some 13,000 \u201cpotential suspects\u201d with Europol. S\u00e4rekanno appeared at the hearing alongside two other senior officials closely involved in PeDRA oversight: J\u00fcrgen Ebner \u2013 deputy director of Europol \u2013 and Mathias Oel, then a senior official in the European Commission’s department for Migration and Home Affairs. In synchronized statements, the three officials asserted that the data transfers were exceptional and governed by a robust legal framework.<\/p>\n

S\u00e4rekanno told the Commission: \u201cIt\u2019s not a mass transfer of data, but a case-by-case assessment.\u201d Europol\u2019s Ebner echoed this: \u201cWe don’t receive bulk data from Frontex; it’s done on a case-by-case basis.\u201d And, according to Oel, transfers of personal data occur solely on an ad hoc basis; PeDRA \u201cisn\u2019t a systematic exchange of data.\u201d<\/p>\n

By looking through internal correspondence obtained through a Freedom of Information (FOI) request, this investigation has noted that the three agencies coordinated in advance to \u201calign\u201d their message before speaking with MEPs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When asked about this, Frontex spokesperson Chris Borowksi affirmed that S\u00e4rekanno\u2019s statement \u201cwas made in good faith and based on the internal understanding and framework in place at the time.\u201d Oel claimed that \u201cthe statement was based on information provided by Frontex.\u201d Ebner did not respond.<\/p>\n

Lud\u011bk Stavinoha<\/strong> is an associate professor at the University of East Anglia, where he researches EU transparency and migration management.<\/p>\n

Apostolis Fotiadis<\/strong>\u00a0is a journalist specializing in EU politics, surveillance policy and digital rights..<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For years, under the banner of combating human trafficking, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, commonly known…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":260855,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[2000,299,5187,10405,27750],"class_list":{"0":"post-260854","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-european","11":"tag-europol","12":"tag-frontex"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114844435974678396","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=260854"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260854\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/260855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=260854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=260854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=260854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}